NRG Expert Power Generator Database and Market Intelligence Ed 1 2012

This NRG Expert product provides a by country/fuel overview of global generating capacity, its evolution and power forecasts. Global generating capacity rose from approximately 134 GW in 1938, to 213 GW in 1950 after the Second World War, and then to 5,082 GW in 2010. Although the figures were small compared with today, the years of WW 2 and the following period, from 1938 to 1950 were a time of enormous change in the electrical sector in which the seeds of today’s industry were sown. There was heavy destruction to the industry in Europe and Japan in the first half of the 1940s, while in the USA capacity grew from 37.6 GW in 1938 to 50.1 GW in 1945. In the years after the war reconstruction commenced, with global capacity growing to 217 GW by 1950. Global capacity is forecast to reach 7,390 GW in 2020.